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Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:06:02 -0500 |
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Mark wrote
>>>if an ampoule of queen pheromone, from known European honeybee queens, was inserted into an AHb hive?<<<
Mark,
If what you say has merit, then why wouldn't killing the queen and introducing a new one, immediately calm the bees down. It doesn't.
I'll tell you a weird thing I discovered with a partially AHB hive I had. It had so much brood I decided to do a split. I despaired of finding the queen. I took a deep of brood from the hive and brushed all the bees back into the hive, put on a queen excluder and put the brood back on the hive overnight. ( can you imagine the mess of bees I had in the air with that operation?) The next day I gave that deep with, attendant nurse bees, a new queen and set them up on the opposite side of the apiary. That split never gave me a moments problem. They were as gentle as lambs from day 1. The remainder of the colony was so vicious I had to move them. I tried the same trick again with different results (with 2 new queens). I finally had to kill the colony.
It seems that the bees that went from nursing to foraging in the presence of the AHB queen had different characteristics. Two more things I noticed. The difference from shade to sun made a difference. Also, they respond so fast that it seems they may not communicate danger only via pheromones. I swear they communicated by sound as well. Tiny klaxons I'll bet.
Dick Marron
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---
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